The Auchroisk 17 Year 1996 from The Exclusive Casks (30 ml cure-what-ails-ya bottle)

Tasting notes:The nose on this dram opens with crème brûlée-ized sugar on top of a caramel parfait–and that aroma is so clear and distinct that I suddenly realized that I could in fact make Smell-o-Vision a reality after all. Stay tuned. There’s also cool citric stuff going on just beneath the crème brûlée/caramel awesomeness on the nose: it’s limoncello, or maybe Passion of the Christ fruit. No wait. It can’t be that last one, because then it would be utterly intolerable and gratuitously so. No, this stuff is stunning, and in the very best way. On the mouth, it’s redwood chips used for a barbecuing a rare sort of ribs with the trademarked name, The Bomb-Diggity™. There’s also crazy wonderful sweetness. It’s dessert in a bottle, if dessert were mind-blowing and on fire. Imagine the lingering joy of having eaten an excellent Cherries Jubilee, only you’re a 10 year-old pyromaniac.This is what I remember chewable aspirin tasting like when I was four and my palate hadn’t yet developed beyond screaming happiness into my brain when the orangey sweet chalkiness hit my tongue. Only this dram is not chalky at all. If anything, it’s a custard honey slide into the finish. With a little water, it’s slightly eggy, but we also got notes of s’mores made with Dr. Graham’s digestives and the marshmallows from a box of Lucky Charms®. But of course, that doesn’t do this dram justice. In fact, its taste is so much purer than that, we all considered breaking our Glencairns for having defiled this dram’s exceptional purity with its coarse inner surfaces. Yeah, it’s that good.

Rating:

–On the scale of things that are screaming good values at their regular retail price–The Auchroisk 17 Year 1996 from The Exclusive Casks is the Wesvleteren XII–One must buy it by the case at the remote brewery and pay a deposit for the bottles, but the famous beer from the Belgian Trappist Abbey is ridiculously reasonable, especially for the best beer in the world.